Contents



Preface

The worldwide urban population will double in 30 years, leading to challenges in food and nutritional security as well as environmental problems. The urban population will increase more in developing countries as a result of immigration from rural areas, since people flock to the cities with the expectation of better quality of life there. Looking to accelerated growth in population of cities and small towns, it is expected that by 2050 more than 60 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas. Besides the growing demand for food, there will also be a rapid increase of poverty, unemployment, hunger, and malnutrition in the urban and peri-urban environment, since only 18 percent of the Earth's surface is cultivable or capable of growing plants, while the rest is occupied by seas, mountains, and ice. The little area capable of growing plants (agriculture, horticulture, and green conservation) is highly competed for by housing, industrial and road constructions, and incessant environmental disasters like bush burning, flooding, deforestation, and settlement expansion due to urbanization. The practice of urban horticultural gardening in third world cities to boost food and ornamental plants production, provide job opportunities, mitigate environmental pollution, and promote green space development may bridge these gaps. This is because urban horticulture utilizes the available pieces of land in cities to raise gardens that can be economically

productive while contributing to environmental greening.

throughout this whole process.

The chapters in this book cover different components of urban horticulture like utilization of soil and waste materials, implications of automation and robotics systems, nutrient management including fertigation and hydroponics, and the potential and scope of urban horticulture in various parts of the world.

We hope that this publication will be useful for students, professionals, and researchers interested in urban horticulture. We extend our sincere appreciation to the authors, who are from different countries, for their contributions to the book. We thank Ms. Iva Simcic, Commissioning Editor at IntechOpen, for inviting us to be editors of this book. We would like to extend our special appreciation to Author Service Manger Ms. Nina Kalinic Babic for her encouragement and superb support

**Shashank Shekhar Solankey and Shirin Akhtar**

**Alejandro Isabel Luna Maldonado, Humberto Rodriguez-Fuentes, Dr. Julia Mariana Márquez Reyes and Juan Antonio Vidales Contreras**

Bihar Agricultural University,

Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León,

India

Mexico
